Max Horkheimer 1895 – 1973
Max Horkheimer was a 20th-century German philosopher and sociologist, the founder of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt and the central organising figure of what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory. His 1937 essay Traditional and Critical Theory set out the programme of a critical theory of society aimed at human emancipation, distinct from the descriptive social sciences. His 1947 book Dialectic of Enlightenment, co-written with Theodor Adorno, argued that the Enlightenment programme of rational mastery has issued in its own forms of unfreedom in modern instrumental reason. He directed the Institute through its years of exile in the United States during the Nazi period and oversaw its return to Frankfurt after the war. Through his administrative leadership and theoretical work, Horkheimer shaped the institutional and intellectual identity of critical theory.
Key facts
- Nationality
- German
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Critical Theory, Continental, Marxism
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Max Horkheimer:
“The fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant.”
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Attributed to Max Horkheimer:
“Reason for centuries has meant the activity of understanding and assimilating the eternal ideas which were to function as goals for men.”
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Attributed to Max Horkheimer:
“The more ideas have become automatic, instrumentalised, the less does anybody see in them thoughts with a meaning of their own.”
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Attributed to Max Horkheimer:
“Logic is not independent of content.”
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Attributed to Max Horkheimer:
“The function of critical theory is to facilitate the historical process by which mankind becomes conscious of itself.”